


Per Exasperatio Ad Astra

by Anna_Wing



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: First Order Bureaucracy, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2019-08-04 10:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16345235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Wing/pseuds/Anna_Wing
Summary: Kylo Ren has broken the Order and is now responsible for the repairs.





	1. In which General Armitage Hux finds himself no longer on Crait

“ _….he’s waking up._ ” A woman’s voice, light and young, stress imperfectly hidden.

“ _Vital signs steady, disengaging oxygen._ ” A droid, neutral and expressionless.

A touch on his face, something being removed. Something else cool and damp being wiped with precise gentleness over the seam of his eyelids.

The droid spoke again. “General Hux, can you hear me?”

He opened his eyes. A face hovered anxiously over him, with a medical droid floating at its – her – shoulder. The light was dim, but brightening slowly as his vision adjusted. 

“Can you sit up, Sir? We’re only an hour out from the _Supremacy_ , and the Supreme Leader said to wake you before we docked. I’m medical cadet Nasaca, sir, this is MDE-955743ESF, field medical specialist.” 

The young woman, a junior (very junior) medical technician from her uniform, slipped a skinny but strong arm around his shoulders and helped him to sit upright. Hux braced himself for the pain (broken ribs, broken collar-bone, strangulation injuries, concussion, extensive bruising and other tissue damage - he knew the litany of his recent injuries at the hands/mind/will of both Supreme Leaders very well). There wasn’t any. Not even the fading ache of bacta-mediated fast healing. The burning itch behind his eyes was gone, as was the ache in his neck and shoulders, and the clamping pain around his temples. The dragging exhaustion that had been weighing him down since Starkiller died had lifted. 

He felt…well, for the first time in a long time. Awake, alert, clear-minded, calm(ish). Also thirsty, but the cadet was already offering a bottle of water. Hux took it, snapped the straw open and had finished half of it before he realised that he was also completely naked, except for the thin emergency blanket covering him from the waist down. He looked around. He was in the Upsilon’s tiny med-bay, barely more than an alcove off the main passenger compartment; small but comprehensively equipped to provide emergency care for combat injuries. The gentle vibration of sublight engines was a soothing hum around him.

He eyed the cadet. She was a very young sub-adult; the droid was obviously the senior practitioner here. For a moment he wondered why someone so junior had been assigned to a combat mission; then he realised that most of her seniors would be either dead or busy with the search and rescue operation around the _Supremacy_. The Crait attack had been a straightforward elimination mission with overwhelming force on the First Order’s side; there should not have been much need for medical care.

Though apparently there had been. Hux tried to think how he came to be in med-bay. He remembered the last argument with a clearly-deranged Ren; being helped up by his soldiers after yet another humiliating attack from the Force (he had not been able to stand unassisted; the impact against the bulkhead had aggravated his existing injuries and added more); the debacle with the holoprojection or whatever it was of Luke Skywalker…

“I would appreciate, Cadet,” Hux said, in a voice that made Nasaca turn pale and stiffen to attention, “being informed how I came here and what happened to me.” 

She swallowed visibly, but said in a small, clear voice, “You suffered a cerebrovascular event while on Crait, sir. While supervising the investigation of the resistance base, sir. We were prepping you for immediate intervention, and Commander Ren, er, the Supreme Leader came in, and, and…”

Nasaca threw a beseeching look at the droid, which floated up to Hux and said, “The Supreme Leader placed his hands on your head, General, and apparently, used the Force to heal you. I cannot say precisely how it was done, since nothing registered directly on my sensors. However the sensors on _you_ clearly show, in layman’s terms, extremely fast tissue repair down to the sub-molecular level, with no discernible energy source. You were unconscious for three hours, twenty-five minutes and twenty-three seconds, asleep for two hours, thirty minutes and forty-even seconds and are now free of all injuries. You have not lost weight or hydration and your general condition has returned to the required standard for First Order military personnel. The Supreme Leader also instructed me to inform you that you are no longer either physiologically or psychologically dependent on systemic stimulants and that your authorisation to override the dispensary limits on prescriptions of same has been withdrawn effective immediately.” While its words were delivered in the usual expressionless vocoder voice, Hux had a distinct sense (he got along rather well with droids) that it was seriously disturbed. 

_As well it should be_. The cool mental stability that he had barely realised he was enjoying since waking up vanished abruptly as he worked out the implications of this series of entirely outrageous statements.

The look on his face must have been truly terrifying, because the droid (medical droids had of necessity sensitive and sophisticated patient-response analysis capabilities) said, “Cadet, please inform the Supreme Leader that General Hux is awake, and await his instructions.”

She saluted Hux hastily and fled. The droid said, “General, your uniform has been cleaned. You may wish to use the refresher.” It floated aside courteously.

For the first time, Hux appreciated why Ren might feel the urge to break expensive equipment. Not being Ren, he refrained from trying to leap up and rip the droid to pieces with his bare hands; it was after all not remotely to blame for anything, and would also instantly shoot him full of quick-acting sedative if he tried. 

Seething, Hux stormed into the sonic refresher (with some difficulty, since it was only two strides away from the examining capsule, but he managed). Exactly seven minutes later he emerged, clean from teeth to toes, to find his sonic-cleaned underwear, uniform and boots lined up neatly for him to put on. His blaster and monomole knife in its hideout sheath (he made a note to change its location on his person; yet another irritation, since he would have to practice the quick-draw all over again) were correctly in the locker for patients’ weapons, sealed to his palmprint and the med-droid’s input code. This soothed him minutely ( _someone_ at least was following standard operating procedure), though it was a merest drop of limiting reagent in the boiling, fluorine cloud of his, in his view, utterly justified wrath.

Nasaca re-appeared, carrying his datapad, which she offered to him in the manner of one expecting her hand to be bitten off at the wrist. “The Supreme Leader requests that you meet him at your earliest convenience, sir.”

Hux gritted his teeth and adjusted his expression. He would _not_ be like Ren.

“Understood, cadet.” He considered a moment, added “Well done, and thank you for your assistance,” and was rewarded when the child flushed with pleasure and straightened her shoulders visibly. She was part of the future of the Order, after all, and doubly precious with the losses that they had taken in the last month.

With the ease of much practice Hux tucked the now-familiar upwelling of rage and anguish away in the furthest recesses of his psyche, jammed his command cap over his irritatingly fluffy hair (the shuttle refresher’s equipment did not include pomade), settled his coat around himself and marched out to confront the wretched charlatan now masquerading as Supreme Leader.


	2. In which General Hux has the first of many alarming conversations

The main passenger compartment was dim, lights at 50%, and empty, except for Ren and a lot of holoscreens floating in front of him. The seats had been turned to their conference configuration, surrounding the table, now raised from its previous position flush with the floor. A tall, insulated cup sat on it, off to one side, next to a couple of ration bars. A familiar, enticing scent drifted gently towards him.

“The galley had tarine tea,” Ren said from where he sat hunched into his chair, not looking up from the screen. “We’re going to be busy, you’d better eat.”

Hux blinked, the momentum of his rage interrupted. Then he got a look at the screens and it resumed with glorious smoothness.

_”Where did you get the codes to access that information?!!!”_

Ren waved a hand at the tea. “From your mind, when I was healing you.”

He looked up and Hux took an involuntary step back.

“I’m the Supreme Leader, I have access to everything.”

A statement like that would normally have been irritating even in Hux’s usual state of cool(ish) equilibrium, let alone his present cyclonic fury. But…

Ren looked and sounded the same as Hux felt, physically. Healthy and clean, (his person and uniform having obviously also been through the sonic); smooth-skinned and calm of demeanour, as if he had been getting enough sleep and nutrition, which Hux knew perfectly well had not in fact been the case, not since Starkiller had died. Not at all the screaming maniac who had rushed out to fight a phantom on the salt-sands of Crait. But his eyes…

Hux was a spacer as well as a soldier, had been since he was five years old. Had spent much of his life traversing the bright threads of hyperspace that stitched the long night of the galaxy with light, binding light and life to life and light, worlds to worlds. But no being that made its living along those brilliant, ephemeral trails ever forgot what waited if (when) the thread broke, the path failed: the endless darkness between the stars. And now Hux saw it, gazing out at him from Ren’s eyes, that had been merely human-dark and were now…something else. Lightless eternity, the black hole that waited at the galaxy’s heart to devour it at the end of all things...

Then Ren blinked, and his eyes were his own again, and Hux staggered on his feet, barely catching his balance. All that lovely, sustaining rage drained away, leaving him unpleasantly breathless, and with panic beginning to take its place. 

“Steady, Hux.” He was somehow sitting down, his forearms propped on the table, keeping him more or less upright. The cup was slipped carefully into one hand, and his fingers closed around it with relief. He opened his eyes, suddenly realising they were shut, and found himself staring into Ren’s face at horribly close quarters. His jerk of recoil was instinctive; fortunately, the cup had its lid on. 

“It’s all right,” Ren said, in what he probably thought was a reassuring manner. “Whatever you saw wasn’t…well, it was your brain trying to make sense of something it didn’t have a referent for. I’m sorry. There’s a reason why true Force healing isn’t done very often. It will wear off soon, I hope. Drink your tea.”

Hux rightly ignored this bit of idle persiflage. _”What did you do to me?”_

Ren had the effrontery to look slightly affronted. 

“Healed you,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “You were dying. Bacta would have repaired the tissue damage, but it wouldn’t have restored the lost memories. You’d have had to start all over again as a personality, and the First Order needs you healthy and in your right mind.”

He glanced at the holoscreens and tapped out a short message on his pad before returning his attention to Hux.

“I’m sorry I injured you. I shouldn’t have done that. It won’t happen again.”

There were so many things that Hux wanted to say (shout) in response to this that he was quite unable to speak at all. For sheer lack of alternatives, he opened the cup and took a sip of hot, fresh tarine, and the unpleasant freewheeling sensation in his mind calmed a little. The aromatic steam and familiar complex bitterness were restorative in themselves, regardless of the tea’s stimulant effect. Which brought him back to his original…concern.

“What,” he said in a perfectly level tone, “did you do to my _mind_? The droid said that you told it…”

The screens wavered then steadied as Ren pushed his datapad aside, laid his long, pale hands flat on the table and looked Hux straight in the face. His eyes were …no longer normal. This time, Hux kept his grip on both tea and composure. No matter how insignificant he might be before the darkness between the stars, he was himself, and where he was, even for the briefest moment, the darkness was not.

“You were dying,” Ren repeated. “I opened myself completely to the Force, and …channelled it towards healing. For you and for myself. Don’t expect me to do it again. It’s too dangerous, for both of us.”

As usual, that didn’t tell Hux anything. Before he could open his mouth to point this out, Ren went on, “Your mind is still your own, or at least, it’s not mine.”

A bell chimed, and a man’s voice, obviously one of the pilots, said, “31 minutes to _Supremacy_ , sir.”

He was _not_ just going to let this go. But now was obviously not the time. And if Ren had bothered to save his life, apparently at some cost to himself, presumably he was not going to have Hux executed, at least not in the near future.

“That really depends on how the rest of this conversation goes,” Ren said mildly.

Hux thought a number of vile Arkanisian swear-words in his direction, not bothering to try to hide his feelings. He hated the Force. In general, Snoke had let him think what he wanted, so long as his words and deeds were only of obedience; Hux’s more treasonous musings had, as far as he was aware, elicited only contemptuous amusement. He had not cared for Snoke, but liking your superiors was unnecessary. He had had some respect for the …creature, if only because the First Order had come farther and faster than it could have without his strategy and resources (and amusement or not, Snoke had had the wisdom to listen to him and promote him, also faster and farther than would have happened without Snoke’s intervention). He hated Ren. Ren had insulted him, threatened him, humiliated him, injured him, and then had the audacity to save his life. And now he was apparently turning into some sort of avatar of cosmic darkness _and_ meddling with his mind, which Snoke had always forbidden. 

“Those are really bad words,” Ren remarked. “You’d have any trooper who used them disciplined.” His eyes were back to human again.

Hux suppressed the urge to scream like a cornered loth-rat. “Ren, _what is going on_?”

Instead of answering, Ren reached up and intercepted one of the floating holoscreens. It rotated obediently towards Hux and expanded so that he could see the running tally of numbers on one side. It was smaller than he had feared, and he started to feel slightly more optimistic, before suddenly realising that it was the tally of _survivors_.

“The Army will follow you,” Ren said, his deep voice soft and emotionless. “But half of the Army is dead. The Navy is controlled by former Imperial officers and they hate you because you are young and Snoke set you over them. Would they follow you above Sloane or Daala or Pellaeon or Ree?”  
The answer was no, and both of them knew it. 

“If you try to overthrow me as Supreme Leader,” Ren continued, remorselessly calm, and utterly unlike the Ren that Hux had thought he knew ( _what had Ren done to himself, while doing whatever he had done to Hux?_ ) , “they will destroy me, and you, and then tear the Order to pieces among themselves. Support me, and both of us, and the Order, might survive.”

Numbers had always been his friends. Their mastery had helped him claw his way up through the Academy's rankings, a scrawny, bloody-fanged child soldier suddenly thrown among boys and girls groomed and educated for _real_ power as he had never been. Later they had helped him shape the First Order, through his control first of the stormtrooper programme, and then of the research and engineering programmes that had made Starkiller and the hyperspace tracker and _Supremacy_ itself. 

Now the numbers told him that Ren was speaking the truth. The loss of Starkiller and _Fulminatrix_ and the deaths from _Supremacy_ (so far of the 2,372,543 people who had been on board, only 1,424,642 and counting were known to be alive) had taken a huge toll on the Order. Not only the ships and the technology, which could be replaced, and would be; the Crait system had gas giants with mineral-rich moons (no matter the urgency, Hux did not send troops into the field without at minimum looking up available information on the terrain) and _Supremacy_ ’s mining and manufacturing capability was intact; he already had the beginnings of a framework in his mind for the repair and reconstruction schedule. But the highly trained stormtroopers, so slow and expensive to replace, the loyal young officers, the skilled, dedicated technicians, scientists and engineers who were the life-blood of the First Order – all spilled and wasted, their precious lives thrown away by treason, by folly, by…

To his frustrated astonishment, Hux found that he was crying.


	3. In which there is much administrative activity and Ren continues to be terrifying in a quite new way

The Upsilon docked in the one hangar bay still being used for regular traffic; the others still functional were dedicated to the search and rescue effort, and medical treatment, the number of casualties being far too great for the surviving med-bays. The Crait expeditionary force had already docked and was unloading in its designated area.

The Supreme Leader strode down the ramp, every hair in place, ignoring the hovering holo-transmitters that immediately swooped, ready to transmit his orders to every senior duty station in the Fleet. General Hux followed close on his heels, eyes still reddened by Crait’s corrosive dust but otherwise similarly immaculate (except for _his_ hair, which was tidy but more in evidence than usual, even under the command cap).

There was no stormtrooper escort waiting (they were all on the search-and-rescue teams; guard duty was currently being performed by the emergency stock of security droids) but a pair of very young petty officers waited at the foot of the ramp; by the look of utter exhaustion on their faces they had been scheduled to escort duty as a rest. They saluted and fell into place behind Hux as he marched briskly towards the waiting lifts at Ren’s side.

Ren glanced up at the holo-transmitters, not pausing. “All points. Grand Marshall-designate Hux is now in charge of Engineering, and all communications external to this Fleet. He will also be organising the establishment of a repair facility in orbit around Crait VII and the removal of _Supremacy_ there once internal systems are stabilised and the hyperdrive can reliably be engaged. All relevant officers both civilian and military are to take their instructions from him. He has my authority to requisition whatever resources he requires. Ren out.“ 

The Supreme Leader’s voice, deep and quiet, nonetheless carried clearly. A simple, direct statement. The Supreme Leader is in charge. General Hux is with him.

Thanks to years of drill, Hux didn’t miss a step but it was a near thing. To the several levels of plans, draft communiques, and personnel decisions already building in his brain was now added the increasingly familiar sense of total disorientation. Their tentative alliance, agreed on the shuttle had not mentioned this, and Hux would have scorned a bribe so openly offered (though he would certainly have accepted it). To have Ren now freely give what he had so desperately wanted and Snoke had always denied (Hux was quite certain that Snoke had known of his ambition and derided it) left him frantically recalibrating his parameters. What was Ren up to? Was this a sign of weakness or of strength? It was in some ways a completely logical move, but …

Ren murmured, “You’re over-thinking, Hux. You have other things to worry about right now. Daala and Sloane, for two.” 

Aloud, he said, “The Director of General Administration is alive and functional and has been instructed to assign civilian staff as you require.”

Hux snapped a salute as they went. “Sir.” His brain gave up and started wondering where his personal effects were. He knew that Millicent was safe with his personal service droid (if she had died he would have obliterated the rebels from orbit, instead of wasting time and resources on a ground attack, Ren’s orders or no) but he desperately felt the need for his pomade.

As they entered the lift, Ren said to the nearest holo-transmitter, “Bridge.”

It hummed and produced a small but clear image of the upper half of a broad-shouldered, golden-skinned woman with a strong, square face and straight, dark brown hair. She saluted and said, “Colonel Rashon here, Supreme Leader. Your orders, sir?” 

Navy Colonel Etto Rashon was _Supremacy_ ’s commander and had fortunately been both off-duty and away from her rooms when the disaster happened (Amilyn Holdo, damn her to all available hells, had scored a direct hit on the senior officers’ quarters, both civilian and military; everyone on their sleep shift or merely relaxing at home had been vapourised).

Ren said, “The Acting Chief of Safety and Emergency Response will continue managing the internal search and rescue on _Supremacy_. The Acting Chief of Housekeeping and Maintenance will continue to manage ad hoc systems repairs. I will continue in charge of the external search and rescue effort. Anyone who needs to consult me may find me in person at the Emergency Command Centre. Do not comm me unless it is an actual emergency.”

“Sir.” Rashon’s image said crisply, saluting again, and vanished.

Hux had not noticed that Ren was doing anything particular in relation to the search and rescue while they were on the shuttle. What did he mean ‘continue’?

“Calm down, Hux. It’s nothing that you need to worry about.”

As if that was any reassurance whatsoever. 

As the lift rose toward the Emergency Command Centre level, Hux noticed how many of the levels they passed were already dark. Sections of _Supremacy_ were being closed off and powered down as surviving personnel were evacuated to the remaining relatively intact ships of the fleet. 

At the corner of the main screen of his datapad, the survivors’ list kept updating as they reported in. Hux made a mental note to have a suitable memorial ceremony organised as soon as the SAR effort ended. 

Ren was back to looking normal again, and Hux wondered if the two junior officers would see that…interstellar vacuum when they next looked into his eyes.

“No,” Ren said. “I was you and you were me, while I was healing you. It has had an effect on both of us, and whatever it is that you are seeing is how it manifests to you. It will wear off if I don’t use the Force in that way again for…a long time. I will try not to inflict any more life-threatening conditions on you, but you have to look after yourself, too.”

 _Get out of my head!_ Hux shouted mentally, and was gratified to see the Supreme Leader wince. He shot the two young officers a warning look and noted with approval that despite wide-eyed astonishment (or possibly terror at hearing information obviously classified far above their pay-grade) they were also pretending their hardest to be part of the lift panelling; they had functional self-preservation instincts, good. The First Order needed people who were brave, but not stupid about it.

“It will wear off,” Ren said again. It did not help more than it had the first time, but the sudden harsh set of Ren’s mouth warned Hux that further demands for elucidation could wait, and should not in any case be made in front of obviously already-traumatised junior staff.

The Supreme Leader left Hux and his escorts behind at the Emergency Command Centre currently in use. 

“I’ll see you later,” was all he said to Hux before disappearing through the door. To the petty officers he said, inexplicably, “Thank you. You’ve done well. You should eat now, and get some rest. I may need you later.”

“Sir!”

“Sir!”

Hux glanced at them, puzzled. The look on their faces was strange. Exhaustion, obviously, and the usual nervousness that Ren inspired in people who had never met him (people who had, generally felt either terror or contempt, depending on their level of intestinal fortitude, or sometimes both at once). But there was something else, too, that he could not quite identify…

One of them, the young woman with dark hair and pale skin, which showed to perfection the dark rings around her black eyes, distracted him by saying, “Sir, your office took damage, and your quarters are in shut-down, so Captain Opan organised a new office for you on this corridor, with living-space attached. Your service droid moved all your effects, and your, er, cat, too, sir. Captain Opan is off-shift now, sir, but Lieutenant Stynnix is in charge of your office.” 

Hux felt a sudden wash of relief and gratitude to Opan, for not needing Hux to do his thinking for him.

“Excellent. Lead on, er,...”

“Naxly, sir. Scan Ops. This is Quev from Comms. We're both seconded to Supreme Leader for the SAR, sir.”

 _Supremacy_ ’s operations-continuity design team had been told to let their imaginations rip when planning for contingencies. None of them had reached the level of paranoia that could conceive of someone ramming a _capital ship_ into it at lightspeed (capital ships cost _billions_ and were meant to stay in service for decades, if not centuries; that the Resistance had been willing to throw away its only substantial military asset told Hux everything about its level of desperation) but they had certainly thought of things like wandering planets, hyperspace accidents and purrgils; _everyone_ knew the rumours about what had happened to Thrawn. 

Consequently, _Supremacy_ ’s aerodynamic appearance was entirely cosmetic; capital ships did not touch atmosphere except in their death throes. Its construction was in fact modular, with multiply redundant facilities (including Emergency Command Centres) scattered throughout its structure. This would unfortunately not have helped most of the people in the modules that had been blasted free (as opposed to being instantly vapourised). _Supremacy_ had been travelling at its maximum sub-light running speed, nearly .95 _c _(relativistically shielded), so if the emergency gravitics hadn’t kicked in, the people in the fragmented sections were mostly a molecule-thick film on the bulkheads. The search and rescue went on anyway. The Order did not abandon its own, and the materiel could usefully be recycled for repairs.__

____

____

Hux’s new quarters were just down the corridor from the ECC. The door slid open, and he stepped through, still shadowed by Quev and Naxly.

“The Grand Marshal-designate!”

As always, Stynnix managed to produce an authoritative bellow quite incongruent with her slender frame (Hux had a strong suspicion that the sheer intimidation factor had played a large role in her promotions).

The result was still gratifying, as his staff leapt to their feet and all but flung themselves at him in joyful relief.

“Sir!” Stynnix said, saluting with millimetric precision, “Welcome back, sir! “

For a horrified moment Hux thought that she was going to hug him, but discipline prevailed, and she settled for beaming at him in an unnervingly happy way. 

“Thank you, Lieutenant. At ease.” 

Hux looked around. The senior office suites had a standard layout, and this one was reassuringly no different from his old office on the _Finaliser_. At the moment they were all in the main office, with multiple workstations and a viewscreen occupying the far wall, next to a door leading to a personal office, a small bedroom and personal refresher. The wall to his right had a door which would lead to a conference room. Since this was all part of the ECC complex, he knew that bunk-rooms and common refreshers for the staff would be down the corridor. 

Not all of his staff were there. Some would be off-shift, of course, resting. But…

“Stynnix, how many of you…”

She sobered. “Captain Opan, Lieutenant Chawolu and Comms Officer Paze are off-shift, sir. Specialist Naritemane is in medical, regrowing her liver and spleen. Lieutenant Haoit and Petty Officer Ilakali didn’t make it. Specialist Reffersel was picked up by _Harbinger_ , he’s mostly all right, they’ll drop him back here once the SAR is finished.”

She glanced at Hux’s two shadows. “Naxly and Quev are with the ECC SAR team, but they’re camping with us for the time being.” 

The viewscreen was showing a schematic, clearly of the SAR effort. Hux could see the points that represented the surviving hyperspace-capable vessels of the fleet, each holding a position on a search sphere a light-year across. 

Stynnix went on, “I took the liberty of notifying Chief Ta-no-ta and Acting-DG StratCom that you were on your way in, sir, they’re requesting immediate appointments.”

“Very well, tell them to come in. The Chief first.” Hux sighed and tore his attention away from the viewscreen. The search and rescue was not his business, though he was grateful that at least one of his staff had survived being blasted into open space at near- _c_. Though now that he thought of it there was an anomaly that needed to be clarified…

“When did the Supreme Leader take personal command of the SAR? I was in med-bay for quite a while after we left Crait.” There, that sounded like a reasonable query. To his surprise it was the other petty officer who answered, the man with eyes, skin and curly hair all almost the same shade of mid-brown. Quev, that was his name. 

“At least six hours ago, sir. Our shift began three hours ago, and there was one more before us.”

Stranger and stranger. So Ren had in fact been running the SAR from the shuttle, while Hux was unconscious. And the other thing,

“You’re only doing half-shifts?” From their obvious fatigue he had assumed that they had been doing triple shifts at least. They were still sub-adults, after all, not yet at adult strength.

Quev nodded, obviously suppressing a yawn. “Just the ECC SAR team, sir. The ones working directly with the Supreme Commander. He says, he says…”

Naxly chimed in as Quev faltered, “He says there’s an energy cost to being in a constant mental link with him while he’s actively using the Force in the way he is, sir. To, to find the lives, and then let us know where they are so that we can pass the coordinates to the search-ships, sir.” 

Hux’s glance at the viewscreen was quite involuntary. It was in subtle but constant movement, as the changes in the ships’ positions updated themselves; the coordinates of pick-ups scrolled down one side of the screen.

Stynnix said quietly, “Sir, they need to rest. We saw the shift before them too. Whatever the Supreme Commander is doing with them, it takes a lot out of them.”

Quev said, in a hushed, drifting voice, “We can feel the lives as well, when he’s with us. All those little points of light in the endless dark, all of us netted together, floating in nowhere…”

“No,” said Naxly. “We’re not nowhere. _He’s_ with us, we can find our people and bring them home with _him_ to guide us, _together_ ".

With a little shock of real terror, Hux realised what he was seeing in their faces. Exhaustion, yes, and bewilderment, and no little fear, though oddly not quite the kind that he was used to seeing in people with too much exposure to Kylo Ren. But here it was mixed with something else, something like awe. Or exaltation. Or worship. 


	4. In which Rey gets a nasty shock

While the Resistance was now down to the size of the social club of a rather small and introverted village, this was still more people than the _Millennium Falcon_ was equipped to handle. The old girl was a freighter not a passenger vessel, and the rapid going-over she had received on D’Qar before Rey and Chewbacca took her off to Ahch-To had not included bourgeois affectations like updated refreshers and fully-heated cargo holds.

Dr Kalonia commandeered the main crew common room for med-bay (Rose, principally, and a handful of others with minor injuries, including Finn); General Organa set the course and then retreated to the Captain’s cabin to confer with Poe; the cockpit was understood to be Rey and Chewbacca’s territory (and certainly no-one was going to try to occupy Chewbacca’s cabin), and everyone else squeezed into any spot that could be jury-rigged to generate basic life-support. Luckily porgs were both heat-generating and willing to be cuddled, and it was not as if anyone was in a position to complain about the smell. Connix drafted a roster for meals, chores and refresher use, and stuck it to the galley bulkhead with glue from the repair kit. There was a general distribution of tea and ration bars (like all spacecraft larger than a one-person starfighter, the _Falcon_ made her own water). As the _Millennium Falcon _fled onward into the endless light of hyperspace, exhausted quiet gradually settled upon the inhabitable parts of the ship.__

__

For approximately three standard hours, after which everyone was abruptly awakened again. 

Rey had retreated to the spare crew cabin, which Leia had assigned to her in an exercise of arbitrary authority. No-one had argued. Obviously, Jedi needed space to themselves, and also no-one really wanted to be too near someone who could probably read minds as well as float rocks. Rey had not argued either. She was feeling bizarrely and horribly fragile, as if she were down to her very last layer of skin, and the slightest touch would tear through. 

Simply meeting Poe had been a strain, though a lifetime of hiding any vulnerability from potential predators (i.e. everyone else on Jakku) had helped her not to show it. To her new-found sensitivity, Poe’s presence was acutely painful. The level of anguish, self-hatred, self-doubt, exhaustion and fear radiating from him, as if he were a particularly nasty piece of old-fashioned fission fuel, was even worse than Kylo Ren’s. 

So when Chewbacca dismissed her ( _Go to sleep, you’re useless right now, I’ll call you when I need you to spell me_ ) Rey went thankfully. Took her quick turn in the sonic refresher, which had the advantage over water that it cleaned her clothes too once she took them off, and fell into her bunk. The memory surface was sufficiently old and forgetful that it did not feel too different from her hammock on Jakku. The fatigue of the strangest and most terrifying day of her life rolled over her like a collapsing rockface, and she slept, effectively defenceless. 

A few hours later, a quiet, serenely meaningless dream about walking up a sand-dune that she _knew_ was actually a happabore, even though it looked exactly like a sand-dune, became something abruptly alien, ferocious and terrifying. Ten thousand light-years away (the Force cared nothing for the commonly respected laws of physics, and hyperspace, the extra-physical realm where the normal constants of the universe did not apply, actually helped the connection), Kylo Ren, in a desperate effort to heal a dying man he disliked but knew he needed alive, was surrendering himself utterly and completely to the Force. The cosmic tide, flooding straight through his divided soul, brought the bond blazing back into existence and Rey shrieking awake, as power roared through their connection like the unleashed Breath of Ri’ia. 

Neither light nor dark, neither death nor life, neither love nor hate, neither good nor evil. Only power, only the one, true, fundamental constant of the universe, only the Force. Every defence stripped away instantly, drowning on the wrong side of the energy gradient, Rey could only scream as the Force tore through her, and reach back through the bond and hold on like a hungry rathtar to the splintering mind on the other end. 

It was Jakku that saved her, and him (and though she did not yet know it, Hux): that diamond-pure, nova-bright, desert-deadly focus on survival that had kept her alive and functional for a decade and a half in an environment where the slightest weakness could (would) kill. Whirling and battered in the inhuman maelstrom that was the Force as it truly was, her petty concerns about her identity, her place in the universe, her place in the _story_ , were blasted away like unprotected skin in a sandstorm, and in extremis, Rey found the core of herself; the very opposite of a divided soul, a fierce and singular point in the vast flux of the Force. Enduring just for a moment, the tiniest scintilla of time before forces too great for an unguarded human mind to bear ripped her to pieces. And in that speck of time it was the hard clarity of her soul that Kylo Ren seized and clung to, and used as his lens to focus the power into a (barely) humanly-usable channel. 

Even then the scouring surge of pure Force through her would have been too much, far too much for her ignorance to deal with if she had been alone. Luckily she was not, and and unlike her, Kylo Ren had had at least a couple of decades of concentrated study and experience with the Force. 

_Let it out,_ his/her/their voice whispered in her/his/their mind, at once impossibly distant and as close as the blood in her/his/their veins, attenuated with exhaustion. _You’re not strong enough yet to hold it. Let it out or you will die burning…_

He/she/they were using it to heal, and to find the lost lives. She/he/they could do the same. The path and the pattern were there for her/him/them to see, and with her/his/their last moment of multiplex self-awareness she/he/they reached out once more, this time to the lives around her/him/them. There they were, all the selves that were not-her, not-him, not-them the tiny points of light in the cold vastness of the universe; living beings, tired, injured, hungry (those were mostly porgs), afraid, and _there_ that brightest one, that was Leia, weary and powerful, the sun around whom the others orbited, the gravitational tug that helped the singular self that was Rey swim back just a little, just enough to know the difference (inconsequential to the Force) between him and her, and, most pertinently, between _there_ and _here_. She/he/they stopped trying to control the flow and simply opened herself/himself/themselves as he/she/they had, becoming the widest conduit possible, letting the overspill heal every wound, every hurt, every weariness on the _Millennium Falcon_. His/her/their words murmured at the back of her/his/their consciousness before it became only hers, and then unconsciousness: _Be healed, be whole, be human, be Armitage Hux, be Kylo Ren, be Rey…_


	5. In which General (for now) Hux gets some good news

A datapad beeped a notification.

Chief of Engineering Colonel Savinthu Ta-No-Ta glanced at it.

“Ah. Our survey droids have successfully opened up the Old Republic mining facility on Moon 23/Crait VII (as referred to in section II(A)(3), sir). It was closed down in good order and according to proper procedures, so it will be usable within two days with just a bit of tinkering, and a revamped power supply. That will save us a lot of time and some resources, and once we get the self-replicators set up it will be the nucleus of the whole repair facility.”

Hux said nothing, concentrating, and Ta-no-ta let him take his time. The three of them, Hux, Ta-No-Ta and one of her minions, Hux hadn’t caught his name, had been in the conference room for the last three hours, taking advantage of the big viewscreen to go through the detailed, stage-by-stage specifications for returning _Supremacy_ to working order as the most powerful warship ever built in the galaxy: logistics, staffing and resource requirements, systems optimisation, cost (at least in outline), proposed evaluation protocols for each stage of the repairs. To have all of this in the time Engineering had had…

Hux looked over at the Chief, not showing his concern. While her black tunic and command cap were impeccable as usual, she had visibly lost weight since they had last met; her dark skin had a nasty, greyish cast and seemed to hang looser on her tall, sturdy frame, and her short, normally tidy gold-grey hair looked as if she had gone a round with Kylo Ren and won. Her blue eyes were bloodshot, and the lines in her face looked as they had been carved with a vibro-voulge; she looked all of her seventy-seven years. That wouldn’t do. He needed her healthy.

“Ta-No-Ta, when did you last sleep?”

“Umm…”

“The Chief has been awake and on duty for seventy-three hours and thirty-seven minutes,” the minion said, in a totally expressionless voice. “Medical has requested and required that she stand down as soon as this meeting is over, sir.”

“Damn you, Lessiker,” Ta-No-Ta growled. “There’s work to be done.”

“Which you can’t do if you collapse, boss.”

Engineering had a lot of latitude, given their specialist skills, and Ta-No-Ta ran a tight team, but one without what she considered unnecessary fuss. Hux had worked with her for years on the Starkiller project, and both liked and respected her. And at this moment he and this Lessiker were in complete agreement.

“You’re the current number two?” 

Ta-No-Ta grunted agreement, nose buried in her cup of caf (his service droid had brought in a flask when Engineering arrived, and been back at intervals to top it up).

“Engineering Senior Specialist Dovaz Lessiker, Sir,” the man said to the air. “Currently Acting Assistant Deputy Chief of Engineering.” He was a thin, pale, wiry fellow of indeterminate age, with dark hair, and very sharp dark eyes. Unlike his Chief, he looked as if he had had at least a few hours of sleep in the last forty-eight. Good.

“Well then, Chief, I approve your outlined proposal and your number two is to begin immediate implementation. I’ll talk to the Supreme Leader about the budget, but it won’t be a problem at least at this stage of the project.” And she would _have_ her budget, all of it, if he had to hold those black-hearted worshippers of nameless perversities in the Directorate of Finance at blaster-point to get them to sign off on it. With Starkiller dead (he ignored the familiar pang) he and Ren needed _Supremacy_ back in the game as soon as possible.

“ _You_ , Chief, are going off shift immediately, and I will see you again in no fewer than twelve hours, at least ten of which you will have spent asleep. You, Lessiker, you may also inform Medical that the Chief is obeying their instructions. Report back to me on progress before you go off-shift.” 

“Sir!”

“Dammit, Hux…”

Hux ignored the insubordination; he knew exactly what she was going through and sympathised. But…

“I need you functional, Savit. You’re going to be in charge of this whole project once we evacuate.”

Ta-No-Ta blinked past her exhaustion, startled. “Rashon…”

“I’ll need her elsewhere. We’ve lost a lot of people.”

She nodded. Part of her condition was the grief of Starkiller, too fresh to have healed yet. It had been her project as much as it had been Hux’s, the great work of her life, redemption of the Empire’s fall. Uncomforted himself, he knew better than to try to offer comfort to her, not in this. The only thing he could give her to assuage the hurt was something constructive (literally) to do.

“ _Supremacy_ can defend herself, and I’ll leave _Harrower_ and _Venator_ and their support fleets in-system with you to secure the system. They will have discretion in case kinetic action becomes necessary. But you will have overall command of this project, and the codes accordingly.”

“Ah.” Their eyes met in complete understanding. Ta-No-Ta was one of the very few ex-Imperials whom Hux would trust with total control over the First Order’s largest single remaining military asset. Her ambitions were purely technical, and as long as he could fulfil those, and as long as he and Ren looked as if they could hold the Order together, she would not break discipline. That was more than he could expect from most of the other senior ex-Imperial officers, and he appreciated it accordingly.

“So. Off with you. Sleep, Savit, you need it. And thank you. Well done.”

Ta-No-Ta rose to her feet with a grunt. She was a big woman, almost as tall as he was and noticeably broader in the shoulder.

“Ha. Wait until it’s done before you thank me, Grand Marshal.”

“Designate,” Hux added smoothly, though he thrilled inside at the casual use of the title. He escorted them out personally, giving the Chief the courtesy that she merited, and himself a chance to stretch his legs and have a moment of relief from the hundred other urgent matters clamouring for his attention.

Ren was still in the Emergency Command Centre, and the latest batch of wilting and starry-eyed acolytes had just staggered off shift. _That_ was a new factor, and he would need to take account of it sooner rather than later…his brief one-to-one calls earlier with the commanders of the surviving Star Destroyers and major support ships involved in the SAR had been rather disturbing too. While it was a good thing that no-one seemed to be imminently mutinous, no-one had shown the slightest trace of concern about accepting Ren as Supreme Leader either, and the debacle on Crait must surely have caused some serious uncertainty. Surely. While there was no love lost between Hux and the old ex-Imperials, the younger commanders were his, and would have sought reassurance from him if they had felt the need for it. That they had apparently not felt the need was…unsettling.

Hux found himself almost looking forward to his conference call with Grand Admiral Sloane of Home Command, and Grand Admiral Natasi Daala, off with the Corewards Fleet. Daala had been tasked with securing the territories of the Imperial Remnant according to the original plan, which Snoke had not changed, notwithstanding that a significant element of it had been blown up. Whatever Force-based weirdness was going on in the Capital Fleet, the rest of High Command at least could surely be relied upon for a normal level of greed, self-interest, power-hunger, and back (and front)-stabbing ruthlessness. Surely.

The dark-haired, dark-eyed woman sitting at an empty desk in the main office was obviously his next appointment. First Order civilian uniform was basically a version of normal civilian clothes on Order worlds – leggings or loose trousers, a wrapped shirt, and a belted overtunic that fell to mid-thigh, mid-knee or mid-calf according to rank. The woman’s black trousers and shirt and soft, dark-red, calf-length tunic, belted in black, indicated that she was a senior official in a public-facing bureau. 

That would be the Acting Director-General of Strategic Communications, the First Order’s diplomatic and civilian propaganda arm. 

He nodded to her, said “In my office in ten minutes, if you don’t mind,” and went into his private office without waiting for her polite murmur of acquiescence. He went straight through to the small bedroom, and found his few possessions tidily boxed and stacked against a bulkhead, and Millicent, much to his relief, curled up asleep in the middle of the narrow bed; her food and water bowls were over by the wall next to the refresher and her litter-box was clean. AK49’s main unit hummed awake from standby mode (over the years Hux had discreetly given his service droid enough additional processing power that its functions had gone a long, long way further than the already-extensive capacities of the average protocol droid) and said, _Sir, do you require assistance?_

Hux considered his list of appointments for the rest of the day, and the need for him to be as functional as possible for the foreseeable future. “I will be on shift for another twelve hours. Supply me with a hot and calorically suitable meal and more tarine tea in one hour’s time, in my office, and another seven hours after that. Leave the door between this room and the office open but do not let Millicent out into the main office.” A bored cat was a cat ripping up his bedding and peeing on his boxes. Let her amuse herself by sniffing around in his office and disconcerting his visitors.

_Yes, sir. **Harbinger** reports that they have retrieved the former Supreme Leader’s navigator team. All alive and not visibly injured, and presently confined in a secure med-bay on Rear-Admiral Telatten’s orders, pending med-scans and the Supreme Leader’s further instructions. Colonel Garmuth is requesting that they be handed over to the Security Bureau for interrogation, in respect of the death of Supreme Leader Snoke._

That was more like it. Hux almost felt relieved that Garmuth at least seemed to have remained his ambitious, ruthless self. If _FSB_ was suddenly going to turn into serene, selfless quasi-droids, he would probably have a nervous breakdown on the spot. That didn’t mean that he was going to yield the initiative to them.

“My compliments to Rear-Admiral Telatten, and instruct her that the navigators are to remain in strict isolation in _Harbinger_ ’s med-bay until further notice. They are under no circumstances to be released to FSB or anyone else without the Supreme Leader’s or my direct orders.”

_Implemented, sir._

Hux had always known that his ignorance of the Force was a grave weakness. With Snoke literally always at the back of his mind, he had not been able to do anything about it. But Snoke was dead and Ren had given no orders yet about either his personal effects or his personal staff. The navigators were now secured, and Snoke’s former quarters (in shutdown, like that whole sector of the ship) had been secured both externally and internally by FSB droids, which AK49 had already quietly subverted. Whatever was in there, Hux was going to know about it, and sooner rather than later.


	6. In which Leia is wise

Rose Tico was sitting on the lounge seats with Finn and the rest of Dr Kalonia’s former patients, drinking soup. Thesame faint air of slightly disbelieving astonishment hung about them all.

“Confirmed,” said Dr Kalonia, with a look of cheerful bafflement. “We are all, every last one of us, uninjured and in optimum physical health. I have no explanation for this whatsoever, except,” she peered cautiously at her chief, 

“Was this the Force?”

General Organa, bright-eyed and erect, stick discarded, glanced around for her second-in-command.

“How are you feeling, Poe?”

He returned her enquiring glance, almost as dazed as Finn. But the marks of exhaustion and stress were gone from his face and the slightly hunched, defensive tightness in his shoulders had eased (though some of that was from the General's obvious return to top physical form, and his own equally obvious return to deputy status).

“I don’t…really know, Leia. OK, I guess.” Leia had not been asking only about his physical health, but knew better than to expect him to be able to describe any hurt less tangible than a stubbed toe.

“I have no other explanation, but the Force,” she said, “But it will have to wait until Rey wakes up. She will…wake up, won’t she?”

Dr Kalonia looked at the readouts on the diagnostic bed recently occupied by Rose and now supporting Rey’s unconscious form.

“I imagine so. She’s in natural sleep right now, and her vitals are as good as...everyone’s. Is healing a Jedi thing?”

Leia accepted a mug of tea in passing from Connix, who was hurriedly rearranging the various rosters to take account of the sudden increase in fully-functional people on board. 

“Yes, it was,” she said at last, “But what I felt…”

She had wakened even before Rey's scream, but her own limited Force awareness had protected her from the full brunt of the power that had ripped through the other woman. And what she had felt had not been anything like the few times that Luke had tried out his limited healing skill on her. She knew how healing worked; she knew what Jedi felt like, from Luke, from her brief contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi in person (even to her untrained senses he had blazed like a supernova in the moment of his...translation into the Force). Rey was a Force-user, no doubt about it, and clearly both Light-oriented and well-disposed towards the Resistance, but not Jedi, not at all. And that other power that had clearly been present…she knew that storm of darkness. Snoke was dead, that much was clear; the thunderous moment of his passing had rocked the Galaxy briefly, for those with the ability to feel it. There was only one other person it could have been. But the Force that Kylo Ren had called upon... had _healed_. And Rey had been there with him, freely as far as Leia had been able to discern it, at the heart of the maelstrom of power that had just barely licked the _Millennium Falcon _with the farthest edges of its strength, and through Rey had healed them all.__

__“Call me as soon as she wakes,” she said. Kalonia met her eyes, the relieved good cheer fading as she saw Leia’s unease._ _

__“I can keep her sedated,” she offered. “We have it to spare, now that I don’t need it for anyone else.”_ _

__Leia’s shake of the head was decisive. “No."_ _

__Rey had healed their hurts, and before that saved their lives, and before that had helped the Resistance at huge cost to herself, for nothing in exchange except a few meals and some clean clothes. Leia would not lightly think evil of her. In any case, pre-emptively ill-treating someone on the assumption that they were an enemy was one of the reliable ways of making them one._ _


	7. In which the Grand Marshal-designate starts to take account of civilians

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Tangrian Cooperation is my invention.

The Acting Director-General of Strategic Communications had already sent him the file of her proposed external comms plan. Hux opened it up to take a quick look before he let her in. It wasn’t ideal, obviously, to have so little time to go through it beforehand, but at least her proposal was succinct and clearly laid out (one of the ways in which hardship and lack of resources had forced the First Order to improve on the Empire; bureaucratic verbiage had been one of the first things to go, along with reliable supplies of food, energy and spare parts). In fact…even the most casual observer would have seen with some alarm his change of expression as he took in the document before him.

There was not one plan. There were several, all detailed and comprehensive (far too detailed not to have been prepared well in advance of current circumstances) and covering different… contingencies: Succession of a Force-user after the peaceful abdication of the Supreme Leader; Succession of a Force-user after the sudden death of the Supreme Leader by accident or natural causes; Succession of a Force-user after the assassination of the Supreme Leader by Resistance or New Republic or “persons unknown”. Succession of a Force-user “according to the customs of the Sith” (his eyelid twitched violently at that one); Succession of a ranking First Order officer (non Force-using) in any of the above circumstances; Resumption of the supreme authority of High Command in any of the above circumstances. All neatly set out in table form for easy reference and comparison. 

There was no column for “Surrender of the First Order to the New Republic”, but Hux was quite sure that he would find it if he squeezed hard enough. There was no subtlety at all about the message, _and accounts for the request for a face-to-face interview_ , rather than simply sending the proposal for clearance to his pad. Hux felt his temples start to thump gently with the beginnings of a headache; reaching up to massage them, the sudden appalling _fluffiness_ under his fingers reminded him that he _still_ had not managed to get to his pomade. 

His next thought, after the first incoherent mental squeak of rage (a major city or two turned to dust from orbit, about that level of fury) was _I made my decision seven hours ago, surely they could have waited until tomorrow to ask me to reconsider???!!!_

If this had come to him before Crait, he might actually have felt something like conflict. Or uncertainty, even. Instead…

“AK49,” he said, very quietly, not at all grinding his teeth, “Get me into the top secret and above files of our civilian network, please.”  
There was a very long pause, at least five seconds. Hux had time to frown slightly. His disquiet was justified when AK49 said, _Sir, I am unable to access those files without the direct and personal permission of the Head of General Administration.”_

“I am the Grand Marshal-designate!” Hux snapped. “I have access to all files except those personally sealed by the Supreme Leader!” 

_According to General Circular GAD-AF3987-542JW “Table of First Order Military-Civilian Protocol Equivalence (Revised)” the Head of General Administration has the equivalent rank of Grand Marshal and answers only to the Supreme Leader, sir._

Hux hissed, but resisted further indulgence in temper. Up until now he had had very little to do with the civilian administration of the First Order (apart from Finance of course, everyone had to deal with Finance). He was realising that this was possibly a weakness too, both for himself and for the Supreme Leader. However, unlike the Supreme Leader, whose preferred response to identified weakness was to hit it with his lightsabre until it stopped moving, Hux favoured a more considered approach, at least to begin with. Ion cannon could always be deployed later. 

He took a deep breath and a sip of tea, and opened up the Acting Director-General’s bio, which the office had sent him as soon as it logged her appointment. The chances were that if someone so high-ranking (according to the table of protocol equivalence she would be a Lieutenant-Colonel) was involved in what could quite easily be construed as treason, she was not the sole mover; and indeed she was probably expendable to the wider conspiracy, given that she had been sent here within his reach. Still, the mynock in the hand was the mynock not chewing on your ship and he would take what information he could get. 

Hux handled internal propaganda for the military, but Strategic Communications was both the face of the First Order to its own on-world civilian populations, and its external diplomatic/intelligence arm to the rest of the galaxy. Acting DG Nienun Tiekte was another ex-Imperial, 55 standard years old. She was actually Deputy Director-General/External Assessment, the operational head of information analysis, but the deaths of the Director-General and the three other DDGs for Diplomatic Affairs, Community Relations and Public Communications had left her the only surviving senior StratComm officer on board and therefore by default the head of the First Order’s civilian propaganda arm. Hux checked automatically where she had been when _Supremacy_ was hit: according to her logged report-in location, she had been forty kilometres away from strike-zero, in one of the hydroponic gardens that doubled as both food supply and recreational area. _Interesting._

“Send her in,” he said. 

The door whispered open, and the dark-haired, red-uniformed woman who had been waiting outside came in. She was not as far gone as Chief Ta-No-Ta, but Hux was perfectly familiar with the look of someone running on too many stims and too little sleep; in better times her pale face was probably round and cheerful, but currently she looked as hollow-cheeked and haggard as everyone else on board, though not nearly as old as she was. AK49 had flagged that she was full-born Tangrian, one of only a handful within the First Order. The Tangrian Cooperation, a small but wealthy collection of allied Mid-Rim systems, had spent several millennia tweaking its citizens’ lifespans to the far edges of human biological potential. Had Tiekte remained safely at home she would only be about a third of the way through her normal life expectancy, though of course, joining the First Order would have cut that down considerably… 

“Grand Marshal-designate”. Her voice was deep for her height, with an accent oddly reminiscent of the Supreme Leader’s, in nature if not in detail – provincial elite, Coruscanti crispness overlaid with other inflections. Not so different from his own in fact, when he was tired and not minding his vowels. 

Hux waved her to the small, deliberately uncomfortable chair in front of his desk. 

“Acting Director-General.” He smiled, an expression known to reduce senior officers to gibbering incoherence. Tiekte was either made of sterner stuff, or oblivious (she was basically an analyst, after all); she smiled back, tired but not visibly nervous. 

“I’m so sorry to have to bother you with a meeting in person,” she said, as if she were about to invite him for tea. “But given the sensitivity of the situation, the Head,” (he could hear the capitalisation), “thought that it would be better to get your assurance of the correct approach directly.” 

That, Hux thought with a certain bitter amusement, was a very diplomatic way of asking him whether he was planning a coup. 


	8. In which both Rey and General Hux are somewhat put upon

The familiar rattle of sand against the walls of the AT-AT woke Rey from her mid-day nap; in the full summer of the Goazon, a human would not survive long without shelter, and she was not searching the cool depths of a fallen Star Destroyer today. And just as well she was home, if a sandstorm was blowing up. Not the ear-blasting scream of the full Breath of R’iia (it wasn’t the season anyway), no, but the normal-strength, grinding roar of wind-blown grains wearing against durasteel and cerametal alloys was bad enough. The wind and the sand would win in the end, but not today. Rey lay in her hammock, blinking into the dimness. Something was strange about the sound; a different texture, as if whatever was being wind-driven against the AT-AT was something softer than sand, slapping at the walls, rather than the drumming of a million pin-sharp particles. ‘Different’ signalled danger anywhere on Jakku, and nowhere more than the Goazon Badlands. She could not afford to ignore it. 

Rey drew a deep, quiet breath, and rolled out of the hammock in one smooth movement, every sense alert. Her staff fell into her hand from where it had been propped near the hammock. She listened, head cocked to judge the direction of the wind. From the pitch of the wind and the strength of the blows against the hull outside, it was blowing away from her ingress. She stood down the bolts on her door, braced the staff in one hand, and used the other to carefully slide the metal open a crack.

A gust of unnaturally cool air chilled her bare face and arms. It smelled strange and felt stranger; Rey thought suddenly of the water trough at Niima Outpost. The light was an odd colour as well, a pale, greyish shade, not the dark yellow-grey of a normal sandstorm. She slid the door a little further open, and stopped, gaping in utter bewilderment.

Instead of sand and rock and distant mesas, all blazing white under the killing sun, or a yellow-brown swirl of suffocating particles, her home was surrounded by …trees? At first she thought she was back on Takodana, with its greenwood and fresh-smelling foliage. But these trees were shaped quite differently, and their …leaves?...were several shades of soft blue-green, carried on thick, silvery-grey stems. Their scent was sharp but not unpleasant, and something that she was quite sure she had never smelled before. The sky above was grey too, a shade never seen anywhere on Jakku; not even at its poles, the only places on the planet where, rumour had it, there was sometimes surface water. _Cloudy_ her mind said, a word she had never had occasion to use but knew with casual ease, a familiar word for a familiar phenomenon. The sky was cloudy. It wasn’t sand falling from the ... _clouds_ , making so much noise against her home, turning the sand outside her door into mud. It was _water_. 

She was looking at a normal, rainy day in the temperate maritime zone of the major southern landmass of Arkanis, a planet deep in a full-scale pluvial era. A planet she had never heard of before, and an entire corpus of implicit and explicit knowledge that she most definitely had never possessed (information about planetary geography and climatology was not something that the average Star Destroyer crewperson would regularly have on their datapads). And yet there it was in her brain, without fuss. Not just _general knowledge_ (another entirely new concept), but specific knowledge and memory. Someone _else’s_ specific knowledge and memory.

. . . . .

_“Grand Marshal-designate?”_

__

__

“Grand Marshal?”

 _“General Hux!”_

Hux blinked, startled. He was still sitting at his desk, the holo-screens floating neatly before him in their accustomed order. He had been discussing the civilian media plan with the Acting Director-General of Strategic Communications (senior civilian official, at least moderately capable, loyalties uncertain). Had he been dreaming? He had been somewhere else..…not the glittering white and red, salt flats of Crait - he scratched the back of his neck reflexively, even though he knew perfectly well that the shuttle sonics had taken care of all lingering grit - but somewhere just as bad: the brown, sandy wastes of Jakku. 

But this was a place on that wretched dustball that he was quite sure he had never seen before; _These are the Goazon Badlands_ the knowledge came to him, _near the Graveyard of Giants_. Far across the dunes the great ships lay shattered, Star Destroyers and Republic cruisers alike, dragged down the gravity well to a shameful death, made nothing but fodder for scavengers. Their broken hulks rose from the drifting sands, the skeletons of beasts unimaginably huge, truly a graveyard of giants, stretching beyond the hazy horizon. It hurt his heart to see them, the beautiful ships denied the honour of a proper ending, the bright immolation at the guns of their peers and equals, out in the deep dark that was their true and proper place. The sun blazed down and its heat was reflected back up from the pale sand. His eyes and head hurt, and his lips and throat were dry, as usual; water was as scarce a commodity as food, here.

_Sir, are you well?_

AK-49’s service module was in front of the desk, blinking in silent alarm.

He could see the Acting Director-General and Lieutenant Stynnix on their feet behind the droid, looking concerned.

“I…yes, I’m fine. My apologies, Director-General, I must have…” what? Drifted off? Had a vision? Had another stroke? None of those choices was acceptable at all. 

The Acting Director-General said tersely, “You stopped speaking suddenly, and did not respond when I addressed you. I alerted Lieutenant Stynnix and your droid.”

AK-49 said _Scan shows nothing abnormal, sir, but this unit only has basic medical capabilities. Should I alert med-bay?_

Stynnix was by his side now, offering a tall cup of water. He took it with a nod of thanks and drained it. The clean coldness cleared his head and soothed his parched throat.

“No, no need for med-bay.” No time for it. And anyway…he had nearly died on Crait. Had definitely had something very strange done to him to keep him alive. The chances that this peculiar episode was completely unrelated to…recent events were so small as not to be worth considering.

“I will consult the Supreme Leader.”

Both women looked even more alarmed. Stupid people did not survive in the First Order, and Stynnix at least knew his feelings about Kylo Ren. 

The Acting Director-General said carefully, “Do you think that this is something to do with the, er, Force?” As if there was no other reason to consult Ren. Which to be fair, there wasn’t (in Hux' opinion, anyway). 

Hux had absolutely no doubt that this was Ren’s fault, damn his sorcery. Not that he was going to go into details in front of an untrustworthy civilian.

“A deeper scan would be useful, Sir,” Stynnix said, in the voice of someone mere seconds away from calling in not just a med-droid but the Acting Chief Medical Officer himself, and insubordination be damned. “Just to eliminate possibilities.”

He appreciated her loyalty and common sense, he really did. But the Force had nothing to do with common sense and he didn’t think it cared about loyalty either, and he didn’t want his own people anywhere near it if he could help it.

AK-49 said _Sir, the Supreme Leader has left the Emergency Command Centre and is coming down the corridor._

Stynnix said “Excuse me, sir,” and bolted for the outer office. Acting Director-General Tiekte braced herself visibly, but stayed where she was. Hux made a mental note that at least the woman had some backbone.

Seconds later he heard Stynnix’s shout, _“The Supreme Leader!”_ , and the response, gratifyingly fast and united, _”Sir!”_

The door whispered open, and there was the softest brush of a footstep; what had happened to the heavy, over-emphatic tread? It had been so obviously meant to intimidate that Hux had not even bothered to mock it mentally, the first time that he heard it. He tried and failed to remember the sound of Ren’s footsteps on the way from the hangar bay.

And then Kylo Ren was there in his doorway, like a black hole come calling.


	9. In which Grand Marshal-designate Hux meets someone unexpected (to him)

“Is she all right? Shouldn’t she be waking up?”

The _Falcon_ didn’t come with anything so fancy as automatic day/night lighting cycles, so everyone on board would have been heading for massive circadian disruption had General Organa not consulted Chewbacca about his preferred schedule and then ruthlessly imposed it on everyone else. Poe had woken early, and decided that he might as well take an extended day shift in the hope of restoring a reasonable balance as quickly as possible. He was in the common area, trying to stay out of the doctor’s way and finish his mug of some nameless tea as quickly as possible before going to relieve Connix on watch (they were short of utensils, too). The girl Rey was still on the diagnostic bed, still asleep.

Dr Kalonia looked as if she had not bothered to go to bed at all. Her own mug (older members of the Resistance tended to carry their most personal possessions around with them in their pockets on a permanent basis, just in case they had to run without notice) sat on the dejarik table, half-full of tea, while she munched an elderly but still edible ration bar, and checked her datapad. 

“She was unconscious, and then she was sedated, and now she is properly asleep,” Kalonia said. “The General doesn’t, um, feel anything deeply wrong with her, so we’ll just let her get her sleep. She’s very stressed and very tired, and less well-nourished than she could be.”

Poe tried not to think about everything that had happened in the last month. Everything that he had ordered, planned, done, failed to do, had happen to him, had happen to all of them; he knew he couldn’t avoid dealing with it one way or the other. Would have to do it soon, but just …not yet. He had no idea what Rey had been doing before she showed up to save them all, but it probably hadn’t been easy either.

To fill the exhausted silence, he said, “Finn said that she was a slave on Jakku. Working for food. Old military rations from the ships that came down in the Battle of Jakku.”

Kalonia looked up, interested. “Ha. That would account for …” she squinted at the pad, made a notation. “I was surprised at how relatively good her condition was, given what I knew about her circumstances. She’s underweight for her height, but not stunted or even very malnourished. If she was living on rations, that would account for it.”

Poe tried to think. This was a normal conversation. He was …not used to having problems talking to people. He gave up and settled for an interrogative noise.

One of the nice things about Kalonia was that she was usually willing to explain things, and she didn’t make you feel stupid while she did.

“Military rations are formulated to sustain healthy adult humans at a high level of physical activity. Imperial rations especially, because they were formulated for clone troopers, who were all larger human males. Even half of a regular ration would have been more than enough to sustain a small female child in a reasonably healthy way. And she’s human too, so it was optimal for her. If she’d been another species it would have been sub-optimal nutrition at best and she would probably be in much worse shape.”

That made sense. “Huh.” He finished his tea and stood. “You need to rest, too, Doc. We can’t do without you.” He smiled at her, the encouraging, leader’s smile, for what little it was worth; not much, he knew. His leadership had killed the bomber fleet and a dozen shiploads of his own friends and colleagues, and for all the survivors knew, they were on the same flight-path, just very slightly delayed. Kalonia was no green recruit, and from the sardonic glint in her eye she knew what he was doing, but all she said was, “Ten more minutes, then I’m out.”

He nodded, and went to leave the mug in the galley, and then to relieve Connix, and then to pretend for one more day that he had any use in the universe at all.

. . . . .

He met Ren’s gaze, and the burning darkness swallowed him. Hux found himself literally struggling to breathe, eyes unseeing as his heart-beat hammered in his chest and in his ears. Ren was saying something, but he could not hear…

“Supreme Leader! Good day! I am Nienun Tiekte, Acting Director-General for Strategic Communications! Please accept the Civilian Arm’s congratulations on your succession! My apologies for interrupting your meeting with the Grand Marshal-Designate, but we urgently need your instructions on our proposed media communications strategy in respect of your ascension to the position of Supreme Leader! So sorry!”

Hux dropped abruptly back into the world of light and breath. He gasped for air, blinking furiously, and somehow got his eyesight back into focus. Ren had half-turned away, releasing him from that fatal stare to gaze down in what appeared to be astonishment at the sudden flood of words gabbled at him, slightly fast and higher-pitched with nervousness. As Hux resumed his grip on reality (he was absolutely insistent that _this_ was reality not the…hallucination thing that had been going on in his brain), he realised that Ren had stepped fully into the room, with Stynnix closer on his heels than was good for her, and the Acting Director-General in front of him and slightly to his side, waving her data-pad as if she was trying to banish a bad smell. AK-49‘s service module was hovering in attendance just beyond; Hux noted with relief that it had had the sense not to deploy security measures. Not only would that most probably not have worked, it would have been treason, and knowing Ren, immediate death for everyone in the room, organic or otherwise. 

Ren was only slightly taller than Hux, but broad-shouldered and strongly-muscled where Hux was sinewy and spare. Next to him Tiekte looked ridiculously small, though she was of completely average height and build for a healthy female human in good physical condition (all members of the First Order, military or civilian, were in good physical condition; mandated daily exercise and strictly calibrated calorie and nutritional intake did that). 

She would have been no match for Ren even without accounting for Ren’s sorcery, had just intervened between him and Hux, on Hux’s behalf, and was very possibly about to die for it. 

Hux stood up, fast. If his fingers had to clench white on the edge of his desk to get him there, well, only AK-49 was going to notice.

“Supreme Leader, there is a matter that I do need to discuss with you, which I believe concerns the Force. However, the Acting Director-General is correct, we also urgently need to decide upon our messaging both to our own people and to the wider galaxy.” 

To his great pleasure his voice barely shook at all.

Ren turned back to him. His eyes were the human eyes; his face showed an emotion that Hux had never seen on his face before, and had no way to identify. He said, quite gently, not bothering to look around, “All of you, out.”

Hux waved Stynnix and AK-49 towards the door (the recording module was on anyway). To Tiekte, following in their wake, he said, “Acting Director-General, I have a scheduled meal break in,” he glanced at his pad, “thirty-five minutes. If you would be so kind, I would appreciate it if you and the Head of General Administration could join me. The conference room in this suite. My staff can organise it.”

Tiekte looked back, apparently relieved at having something so mundane to deal with. “Of course, Grand Marshal-Designate, we will be here.”

And that said something as well, that she was close enough to the Head to commit her time without consultation. 

The door hissed shut behind them all, and Hux was alone with his Supreme Leader.

Acting upon the principle that attack was the best form of defence, he didn’t wait for Ren to open communications (or hostilities, or whatever else he might have in his incomprehensible mind).

“Supreme Leader, _what_ is going on? I am _hallucinating_!” _And it is undoubtedly all your fault._

Ren sat down in the visitor’s chair. It was on the small side, and vanished entirely under Ren’s bulk, even though there was distinctly less of that than before.  
Something was seriously wrong with Hux’s executive function, because the next words out of his mouth were, “You need a new cape.”  
Ren blinked, then answered as if things were _normal_ , as if they were having an ordinary (relatively speaking) exchange in the corridors of the _Finalizer_ on their way to see (be seen by) Snoke…

“No. I only used it because the material was anti-static and helped against Force lightning. There’s no need, now. I’ll decide on a new uniform later.”

As if he had even had an _old _uniform rather than a bizarre mishmash of garments designed for nothing but playing dress-up-and-scare-impressionable-storm-troopers in (and what was that about Snoke?).__

“And killing,” Ren said, still in that matter-of-fact, terrifying voice. “It was quite useful for that, too.”

The information about Snoke’s behaviour towards his apprentice aside, Hux had to get a grip on himself before he lost everything to a medical discharge (would Tiekte accept him into her department? There were plenty of vacancies at the moment). 

“The hallucinations,” he repeated. “I would be very grateful for an explanation, Supreme Leader, and if possible, a solution!” <

And that tone of voice was probably going to get him killed now.

“No,” Ren said. “I don’t blame you for being upset. Will you let me in so that I can take a look?”

. . . . .

In the outside office, Hux’s personal staff were crowded round Ak-49’s service module. 

Lieutenant Stynnix’s hand was on her blaster. “Unit, does the Grand Marshal need our help?”

The Acting Director-General looked up in alarm from the corner where she was talking fast and quietly on her comm. She too was armed, though with the lighter, civilian version of the officers’ blaster; however that momentary impulse in Hux’s office had, she felt, used up her daily ration of suicidal insanity. By the mercy of Lady Space she had somehow managed to get away with it, and she had no intention of allowing some trigger-happy child to get the lot of them killed after all that. She stepped in (again).

“Protocol unit, are you assigned to the Grand Marshal-designate’s personal staff? How would you prefer to be addressed?” 

Tiekte was the highest-ranking person in the room, civilian or not, and whatever it was now, AK-49 had indeed begun its existence as a protocol droid. It answered her. 

_I am, Acting Director-General. The Grand Marshal-designate commonly addresses me as AK-49, and that is acceptable._

Lieutenant Stynnix looked mildly confused at a droid being spoken to as if it was a peer, but held her peace before a senior official.

“Thank you, AK-49. The practice of the Civilian Arm would be to address me as ‘DG Tiekte’, or just ‘DG’, if I am the only one of my designation present, if that is in accordance with the Military Arm’s protocol. Could you give us your assessment of the situation, please?” 

“It is, DG. The Grand Marshal-designate’s vital signs indicate a high but normal for him level of mental stress, but are otherwise in order. He is not in pain and the Supreme Leader is not offering him physical violence. I will advise if these parameters change.”

“Thank you,” Tiekte said, still setting a good example of proper manners for the children. Droids were essential to the efficient functioning of the Civilian Arm and were treated accordingly.  <

While AK-49 was speaking, a more senior officer had materialised for his shift; Captain Opan, as it happened, though she did not at that point know his name. His age and rank, at least were immediately apparent. Tiekte turned to him with some relief. Here at least was someone who wasn't quite so _young_. <

“Captain, the Grand Marshal-designate has invited me and the Head of General Administration to join him for his next meal break. The Head is on her way here and will arrive in about twenty minutes. Neither of us has specific dietary requirements or restrictions.”

The skull-like countenance did not look as if it showed emotion easily, but Opan’s lip twitched in what Tiekte guessed was his best approximation of a polite smile.

“Of course, ma’am,” he said smoothly. “AK-49 has doubtless already notified Catering. If you would be so kind as to follow me to the conference room, I will receive the Head when she arrives.” 

. . . . .

Hux was getting very tired of having his mind casually turned inside out by Force-users. Ren’s mental touch was not painful (unlike Snoke’s), but there was a strange interior tickle that was still annoying, as if he was perpetually trying to think of a word that he could not quite remember.

At least wherever he was hallucinating now wasn’t Jakku, and was even, he had to admit, quite pretty. A white sun shone coolly in a pale blue sky, over a small glade of short, pale-green grass; on all sides there was a gentle susurrus from tall-stemmed, white and grey plants. They bore lacy, intertwining branches that trembled delicately in a soft, rather chilly breeze. A path led away among the pallid stems, through dappled, shifting shadows. Hux decided that the temperature-adaptable fabric of his uniform (not to mention the armourweave interlining that bulked up the tunic) was keeping him perfectly comfortable, thank you, and he had no need whatsoever for his greatcoat; it did not materialise, but he had no way of telling whether his will had had anything to do with it at all.

“Chandrila,” the Supreme Leader said from behind him. Hux turned and found Ren sitting cross-legged by a small pool of what was presumably water, that reflected the pale sunlight with mirror brightness. “This is a place in the Hanna City Botanic Garden. Sit down.”<

That was clearly an order, so Hux folded himself down into the kneeling rest position of Tëras Käsi, for whatever good it would do him, here in the Supreme Leader’s mind. 

“It’s your mind, actually,” Ren said. “I just changed the décor to something prettier than desert.

“We could be in mine, but it wouldn’t be safe for you. I opened myself to the Force all the way, to heal you, and I...it’s still affecting me.”

“And me, presumably,” Hux said, definitely not grinding his teeth.

“Yes. Not just you.” 

Hux had not realised that his capacity for apocalyptic fury had limits, but obviously it did. He was tired. Not physically - whatever Ren had done had quite definitely remedied his various ailments - but even his almost superhuman resilience was feeling the strain of coping with this insanely strange day. He wished that Ren would stop the gnomic utterances and just say whatever he had to say, in a simple, straightforward manner, beginning at the beginning and going on to the end.

“I’m sorry,” Ren said. Ren apologising for anything should have been worthy of note in itself (and he had done it _twice_ in the last twelve hours!), but today it was just one more damned thing after all the others. “Things have become very complicated.”

Without warning, the pleasantly cool breeze was suddenly baking hot, as if there had been a breach of _Finalizer_ ’s reactor containment fields. The trees and the pond wavered before his…mind’s eye and were replaced with endless tawny sands under a blazingly bright sun. Hux squinted beneath the unexpected glare and shaded his eyes with one hand.

“No,” Ren said. He sounded annoyed. “Stop that. This is General Hux’s mind, not yours or mine. We’re guests. Be polite.”

He lifted one gloved hand and Hanna City Botanic Garden reasserted itself as reality, bringing with it a lean, ragged young Human woman with brown hair and sun-tanned skin. Pretty, in a sharp-featured, desert-starveling way, and crouched in a defensive stance, a long metal staff held before her in guard position. There was something vaguely familiar about her…

Hux tried to focus on the woman, and then recoiled, almost overbalancing before he got both of his hands up to cover his face. If Ren was a black hole, this woman was…the opposite, a blazing singularity of power, a single, focused point of white fire too piercing-bright to be endured by mundane eyes. It was like looking into Starkiller’s focusing oculus in the moment that it fired, overwhelming power and utter alien strangeness in terrifying combination.

“Steady,” Ren said, and cool darkness fell around Hux like the lost cape, shielding him with its shadow. “Tone yourself down, you’re upsetting Hux.”


	10. In which Grand Marshal-designate Hux hears some interesting things

This twilight quiet was rather nice. Restful. Hux stopped worrying about the unseemly dispute between Force-users going on outside it, and let his thoughts run freely, the way he had in those happy, long ago days at the very beginning of the Starkiller Project, back when it was just an interesting file rescued from the ruins of the Tarkin Project. 

After a while, though, having made mental notes on some niggling issues with the hyperspace tracker, found at least three potential ways to increase the efficiency of the subspace beam generation system at more resource-conservative, non-planet-killing energy levels, and made a preliminary list of the many, many flaws in the First Order’s systems, SOPs and personnel management policies that had allowed the recent multiple debacles, the part of Hux’s brain that never stopped paying attention to survival prodded him in the prefrontal cortex and reminded him that (a) he had been in this (fair-to-middlingly-consensual) joint hallucination for a while; (b) he had work to do, rather than just think about; (c) this was _his_ mind, not anyone else’s; and (d) it was extremely rude and presumptuous of Ren and a demonstrably hostile Resistance operative (he had also (e) realised who she had to be) to be having a noisy argument there without so much as an “excuse me” or “by your leave” (the Academy under Brendol Hux, may he rest in pieces, had been a nightmare of ruthless competition and vicious, literal and metaphorical backstabbing, but it had been extremely strict about forcing the cadets to practice proper Imperial etiquette; and also, incidentally, formal dancing in the Coruscanti style). 

As his attention shifted, Hux realised that the shadow around him was lightening, and the woman was no longer imitating a close-range quasar at him. She was actually shouting at Ren, a gabble of Rim oaths delivered in a disconcerting Core accent. She wanted to know where she was and what was going on and what nefarious plot Ren was involved in now. Since this was also a question that Hux wanted answered (Hux had previously considered Ren incapable of plotting his way out of a ration-bar wrapper, but her various interesting references to Snoke were making him willing to change his mind), he stood up, feeling safer on his feet, even if they were only imaginary. Carefully not looking at her, just in case, he said loudly and clearly,

“Supreme Leader, might I enquire who this person is and what she is doing here? I thought we were having a private discussion.”

Ren blinked up at him, and at the woman, who was now brandishing her ridiculous stick menacingly in Ren’s direction. He didn’t move.

The woman glared at Hux and Ren impartially. ‘Who’re you, and what are you doing here?”

Hux sneered in her general direction. “Madam, I am Grand Marshal-designate Armitage Hux, and the Supreme Leader informs me that you are here in my mind.”

Ren said, “Grand Marshal-designate, allow me to present Rey of Jakku, my Light-side counterpart in power, my sister in the Force. Rey, this is Grand-Marshal-designate Armitage Hux, leader of the Military Arm of the First Order.” 

Whatever Darkside hellhole he had come out of, Ren had learned manners somewhere, though he seldom chose to show them. Then the substance of what he had said, rather than that thrilling “Grand Marshal-designate”, caught up with Hux, and only iron will kept him from gaping in a manner quite unbecoming to his rank.

“I’m not your sister!” the woman said. 

“No,” Ren said agreeably. “You aren’t.” There was a particular note in his voice that had both Hux and the woman eyeing him suspiciously.

“How can this be happening? Snoke is _dead_!” Her voice was plaintive now. Hux actually sympathised for a moment, before remembering that according to the security recordings retrieved by FSB she had not just almost killed Ren, she had quite definitely had _something_ to do with the destruction of Starkiller Base.

Ren rose to his full, imposing height (four centimeters taller than Hux, on a good day, not counting the soles of his boots). Even without the cape he loomed, and the rippling tree-shadows seemed to pool and drip around him in a profoundly disturbing way.

“Our bond remains,” he said (intoned; that portentous note that he usually applied to particularly banal statements). Hux bit his tongue hard so as not to bleat “What bond?” like some idiot junior lieutenant on her first rotation. “Snoke lied, about that as about many other things. When I opened myself to the Force to heal General Hux, you were pulled in too. Don’t be surprised by any after-effects. You’re strong in the Force and Hux isn’t, so the effects on you will be greater and more unpredictable than on him.” 

“What effects? What have you _done to me_?!!”

To Hux she was starting to flicker like a failing holo.

“I don’t know. You’ll have to see for yourself.” At least Ren could not be accused of actually being _helpful _to the Resistance either.__

__

__

“You’re waking up,” he went on. “Tell them that I have no interest in the Resistance now that Skywalker is dead. They can run where they want, I don’t care. No one cares about them anymore.”

__She opened her mouth to reply, eyes blazing, and then wavered and vanished, leaving the imaginary Chandrilan garden and Hux’s overstressed brain a much nicer, quieter place._ _

Hux said, “Skywalker is dead? What is this bond? Is she a Jedi?”

It was also good that Ren was seeing sense about the Resistance. The First Order had a lot of problems to deal with right now, but a few malcontents with delusions of grandeur were not among them. They had struck their blow, and it had been an dreadful one for the First Order, but it had also been their last. The First Order had survived and would recover. The Resistance would not. The offer of a suitable reward would ensure that the galaxy’s bounty-hunters would take care of the remnants without the First Order having to stir itself further.

Ren sighed. “Time is different in here, but you’re right, we do have work to do, and you need to know some things before we go back and deal with the rest of them.”

. . . . .

__Dr Kalonia, returning from cleaning her mug to make a last check on her patient before (finally!) turning in, was just in time to lunge for the emergency alarm on the diagnostic bed, and shut it off before it woke the whole ship. Rey was thrashing in her sleep and mumbling, and the whole bed, not to mention various small, unsecured items in its vicinity, was shaking in a way that was probably not within its manufacturer’s usage parameters. Kalonia made a decision mid-lunge, went for the stimulant rather than more sedatives, and brought the girl gasping awake before she destroyed Kalonia’s elderly but currently irreplaceable equipment. Then she called Leia._ _

. . . . .

After three entire ration bars and several large cups of tea, Rey found herself wrapped in a blanket on the double bunk in the General’s cabin, telling the General …almost everything. Nothing about the _Supremacy_ , Snoke, or the mad fight against the Praetorians (she had that name from B…Kylo Ren, she was fairly sure) nor about the raw shock of having her every hope and expectation turned against her. But everything about Achh-To, the temple, the bizarre Force connection to Kylo Ren, which she let Leia assume had begun during the fight on Starkiller Base, her dreadful disillusionment with Luke Skywalker.

“I’m sorry,” she said, dry-eyed (tears were a waste of water and signalled weakness to the predators) and mind-guarded, the way she now somehow knew how to do, “I know he’s dead, and he saved you all, I know. I’m sorry.” 

Leia nodded and patted her shoulder gently. “What you are telling me…makes sense of a lot of things that I didn’t understand. When it happened, when he told us …what Ben had done, all he would say was that it was his fault, that he had pushed Ben into the Dark. Even Chewie couldn’t get anything else out of him. Even Han. Never more than that. And then he disappeared. He …didn’t even try to help us find Ben. Just said that there was no point, that Ben was lost. We tried for years. Han …I lost Han to his old haunts, looking. I searched for all the information that I could, studied all I could, stretched my mind, my powers, as much as I could without Luke or a teacher. There was nothing. It was less than a year ago that an old contact in the Expansion Region sent me a message that Ben was with the First Order.”

“Ren,” Rey said, around the sudden ache in her throat (not tears, never tears). “He’s Kylo Ren, now.” 

Leia leaned back against the bulkhead and fixed her with a shrewd stare. Rey could feel the pressure of her mind, searching. A soft, diffuse touch, not strong in comparison to her son’s burning presence, but still formidable for all its gentleness. _You have to let her find something, so that she stops looking_ , instinct (or something/someone else) whispered at the back of her mind, and she let Leia see the memory of that almost-touch on Achh-To, and the last vision through the Force connection, her son on his knees, desperate and empty-handed in the deserted base on Crait. 

Leia let out a long, soft breath, not quite a sigh.

“So what just happened…”

“I was there with him,” Rey said. “Just now. A place with white, um, trees? And a pool of water in the middle. A garden? He was there, with another human. A tall, thin man, very pale-coloured. With really strange hair.” She frowned, not quite certain that she believed the memory. “It was orange.”

“Oh.” Leia blinked. That...was definitely not what she had expected. “General Armitage Hux?”

Rey nodded. “I think that was the name. But not ‘General’. A different title, 'Grand something'.”

“The Empire had Grand Generals,” Leia said. “Perhaps he got his promotion after Hosnian… But it’s not that important right now, I think. Did Ben…Ren, say anything?”

That, Rey remembered. “He said that no-one cares about the Resistance any more now that Skywalker is dead, and he doesn’t care either. And you can run where you want.” It sounded very incoherent, said like that, so she clarified, “He is not going to chase you.”

The corner of Leia’s mouth curved up with faint, grim humour. “Well, that’s something, anyway. Do you know how he managed to pull you in?” 

“I don’t know,” Rey said miserably. “I don’t know anything about the Force.”

“I thought I did,” the General said, “But much less than I would like, and it seems, much less than I should. I need to learn more, and so do you.”

. . . . .

**Author's Note:**

> My version of the First Order has a unified rank structure for both Army and Navy, except for the top ranks, which are General and Admiral respectively.


End file.
